Engine-Building in a Game

 Engine-Building in a Game

Yep! That looks like an engine!

One of my favorite parts of an engine-builder mechanic in a boardgame is, weirdly enough, the thing that my friend Roger says most frequently sabotages his game. He spends a lot of time building this great big beautiful engine that's going to do amazing things! And just as it's about to realize its full potential, the game is over and Roger has lost. Before I get too far into the weeds on this, let me back up a moment for anyone not familiar with the idea of "engine building" in a game.

Basically, when someone uses this term in reference to a board game, we're talking about a game in which players assemble different components or effects (decks, abilities, etc.) with the intention of those components effectively creating a sort of machine that plays the game for the player. In other words, players are building a Cascade Effect: when that card comes up again, it'll trigger this worker, and that worker will collect these resources, which I can then use to upgrade this thing which will cause that card to come up more often, which will trigger my worker more often, and so on and so forth. It's ridiculously satisfying when the Cascade Effect towards which you're building triggers the way you planned and just turns you into a boulder rolling down hill. It feels good when plans pan out, and machine-building is the embodiment of that. It's also super easy to fixate on building the machine and losing track of the win condition of the game you're playing! So, like Roger, I sometimes focus so hard on building a thing to the best of my ability that by the time I'm about to trigger this awe-inspiring engine that's gonna do a million cool things, the game is basically over and I am too far behind to stand a chance of winning. It's worth noting that anytime I mention this, it's not something I dislike about the mechanic! It's challenging to find the balance between building a machine effective enough to get you to the finish line, but not so refined that too much time was spent building it.

In my opinion, moreso than a lot of other games, good engine builders are games that require players to spend more time with them in order to play them well. I say that because the only way to really strike the balance required to build an effective and efficient engine is to grasp the pace of the game itself. Even when games aren't identified as engine builders, a lot of games feature tech trees. And a lot of those tech trees can encourage engine building. Some of them are red herrings and some are actually effective. The red herrings are the tech combos that sound really amazing, but there simply isn't enough time in the game to achieve them in a meaningful way. They're attractive and sometimes seem plausible, but they require so much effort that they're simply not worth it. I've both seen this happen and been a victim in games like Twilight Imperium and Beyond the Sun. I've done it in Everdell in pursuit of a killer turn that will swing the game in my favor (which rarely, if ever, actually works out) and I've done it while building Armada fleets (machines so delicately tuned that they're easy to disrupt and the effect they're supposed to have telegraphs my play from a mile away).

If we know this is the risk with engine builders, why do we still fall victim to the red herrings and empty promises of complex, awesome, invincible machines? I would venture a guess in two parts.

The first is a callback to what I mentioned earlier about the pace of a game. Think of sports and what 97 seconds left on the clock while down by 2 scores might mean depending on the sport. If it's football, 97 seconds is an eternity. But only if you already have the ball, you have timeouts, and you're down by two field goals. It's extremely situational. If those two scores are two touchdowns and you have 97 seconds, the game is fairly well over, regardless of whether or not you've got the ball and timeouts. Unless, of course, you've got the ball in the red zone, you can score quickly, and recover an onside kick. Unlikely, but possible. Meanwhile, if you're down two scores in the last 97 seconds of a basketball game, that's just called a basketball game. If you're down two scores in a hockey game with 97 seconds left, the odds aren't great. But two goals can absolutely happen in the blink of an eye. Especially because, statistically speaking, there are more goals per second in the last minute of the third period of a hockey game. And since there's no time in a baseball game, any score differential can be overcome even with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning. Sure, the odds are against you, but it's absolutely possible. You could spot an amateur baseball team a 37 run lead going into the bottom of the ninth, and a professional baseball team would score 38 to win it. The amateur team might not even get a single out.

All of this is to say that the pace of the different sports I mentioned above dictate what strategy looks like in the last 97 seconds of the game. Heck, it dictates what the strategy looks like in the first 97 seconds of the game and every second in between. There's a point in any game where you've got less time left than the amount of time you've already been playing. Having a grasp of the pace of a game is essential to comprehending what we can and cannot accomplish based on how much time we've been playing the game and how much time we have left. With that in mind, it's easy to make the mistake of building an engine we'll never feasibly use if we do not grasp the pace of the game. And while for some of us, that kind of comprehension comes naturally, for the rest of us, it takes practice and multiple plays.

The second part is the satisfaction we get from solving a puzzle. It's biological, right? Dopamine is released with every success as we solve a puzzle. And getting so many different elements of a board game to work in concert to achieve an end goal or chain together a bunch of effects that increase your score is immensely satisfying, and every trigger releases a dopamine hit. The last game I played was Ecos: First Continent. I didn't end up winning, but I did have a couple of turns wherein several of my Ecos cards triggered other Ecos cards, giving me a big turn with lots of different benefits. I was in the winning position for several turns, but didn't draw the tile needed to end the game. By the time we did, the other two players had jumped me. It was an immensely tense and satisfying end to the game! But seeing the engine I'd built pay out was terrific fun. So sometimes, I think we're vulnerable to chasing those dopamine hits! I have gone out of my way to build X-Wing squads that feature very niche interactions between my droids because I want to see those all chain together for some big gains. I've never hit on a single one of those big and tenuous combos. Too many moving parts for not enough payoff, so it's either too easy to disrupt or too difficult to set up. But sometimes, once we've "seen the Matrix," we just can't stop chasing our white whale and it ends up dooming us.

I don't know what to tell you; I've had a writing block for awhile and I'm so happy to get back to it that this post probably isn't as coherent as it could be...

Anyway, engine building is a terrific game mechanic and probably one with which we're all familiar, even if we don't realize we are. I'm not always good at them, but I love trying to figure them out. There are a ton of them out there, but some of my favorites are below. Please note that these aren't necessarily "engine builder games" so much as they feature engine building as a mechanic. Also please note that I'm not claiming these are the pinnacle of the game mechanic! These are just some of my personal favorites that I'm always happy to get to the table.

• Everdell
• Underwater Cities
• Ecos: First Continent
• Power Grid
• Quacks of Quedlinburg